Via Prague: The Devil's Clothes

The boy Ruda had been to the Ocean View Cemetery each day since his father's death a fortnight before. It was autumn, which on the coast meant a heavy, thick-wind season. That afternoon the grass on the high hill of the cemetery, battered by winds coming from the bay, lay in flattened wet tufts.
The boy, two months shy of his eleventh birthday, was already tall, a wispy-haired boy with gelatin-green eyes. At the funeral he'd sat next to his mother, and everyone later remarked on the boy's dignity, the dignity of the sad pair together at the head of the procession. The casket had been sealed, of course; the swelling of Jack Warren's head -- his head resembled a kind of horrid melon -- had made him almost unrecognizable.
That was from the bees. According to the local reports, Warren, owner of a hardware store in Eureka, had been outside in his garden working late Saturday afternoon when he was fatally attacked by the swarm. It was later disclosed that cause of death was a massive allergic reaction to the stings. His body had been stung hundreds of times.
At the inquest following the senior Warren's death, Mr. Johnson, owner of the apiary just outside King Salmon, where the Warrens lived, stated he had no idea how the bees had escaped, and that at any rate in twenty years they'd never been known to be aggressive. Naturally everyone believed Mr. Johnson, and there was no reason not to, for he was a genuinely kind and malice-free man. But even more curious, after the death of Jack Warren, whose body was found in a field where he'd fled some fifty yards from the house, the bees themselves were found roosting quite peacefully in a nearby tree, and were later returned to the apiary by a shaken Mr. Johnson without incident.
For the first few days after the funeral, the boy Ruda's mother accompanied him to the cemetery, but after that, she let him go alone, partly because she was due back at the elementary school, and also because she felt troubled. Truth is, everyone in the community felt troubled.
The trouble was the suitcase. Every day he went to the cemetery, the boy carried with him a suitcase, a gold-colored suitcase that looked scarcely used. What was inside the case? That was no mystery. It contained: a grey pinstriped suit, a muted red tie, a white oxford shirt, and a pair of black patent leather shoes.
Not even the boy's mother could account for the suitcase, and its contents. She'd tried asking Ruda, but knew that he wouldn't answer; he could be as stubbornly reticent as his father Jack.
One morning, about a month after his father's death, Ruda made his usual trip along Highway 101 to the cemetery, suitcase in hand. He arrived just after noon at the cemetery, and only nodded when a caretaker waved familiarly at him. Arriving at his father's headstone, a handsome piece of granite lighter than the ones surrounding it, Ruda looked for a moment at the pink and red flowers by the stone, the flowers long since quailed by the driving autumnal winds. As he stood looking at the grave, the boy suddenly became aware that someone was approaching. He turned and coming up the hillside, almost as if from the far-off Pacific itself, was a man. The man appeared to be a late mourner, for he was dressed in funeral clothing; absurdly he carried a corsage, as though he had a date. As the man mounted the hillside, Ruda got a better look. He had stern, hollow features, and walked with a noticeable limp. His thick black hair blew wildly in the wind, as though pulled at each end by passing crows, and his eyes, two scratches in the moldy-pallored skin, lit up in recognition as they focused on the boy.
Ruda shivered, and by some instinct picked up the suitcase and drew it toward him.
'I believe that's for me,' said the apparition, as he came within shouting distance. Except the man didn't shout. Even over the high wind, he seemed to be speaking in the boy's head, or whispering in his ear.
'How are you, son? Quiet? Well, like father like son.' A thin, horny hand extended. 'Come on now, let's have it.'
The boy clung to the suitcase, he knew not why. Though his mind was a tangle of loose jagged wires, his heart beating wildly, the boy's thoughts vaguely focused on his father, a conversation they'd had a few months before. It was in the attic while they were up there putting in new insulation, and the boy had accidentally stumbled upon the suitcase. The father Jack had taken the boy into his arms, one of the few times he ever did.
'Someday I'll be gone,' he'd said. 'And when I'm gone someone, a man, will come looking for this. Don't say a word to him. Try not to even look at him if you can. Just give it to him. It's something that belongs to him.'
'So your father told you not to say anything, that it?' the man said, again seeming to speak to his thoughts. 'I suppose he's got a right to look after you, seein' as it's too late for him.'
Ruda again saw the hand reach for the suitcase. This time he let it go.
'Good boy.' The suitcase's gold cover shimmered in the sun. The man grinned, his teeth sharp and gnarled like rocks in a ravine. 'Ah, the clothes make the man, that's what they say! Well, I guess you could say that was true in your old man's case. Wasn't for this suit, he'd a never opened that hardware store, never woulda' been able to marry your mom and buy that nice place over yonder by the bay. Was twenty five years ago this October, your old man was down and out, after he'd got out the Army. Couldn't get a job he said, on account he couldn't present a decent appearance. Said he'd do anything for a decent pair of clothes. That's where I came in. I gave him that suit, and this here suitcase. But I said someday, one day, I'd be back to collect.'
The boy listened; the strands of the story reached him in circuitous waves. Most of it didn't reach him. He only heard the man's voice, like a pair of raven claws, scratching the autumn air.
'Well, I guess I better get going now,' the man said, patting the suitcase and indicated the carnation in his other hand with a jerky glance. 'I got a girl down the road in Laytonville says she ain't got a date for the Christmas pageant. So I got to deliver these. But just remember boy: you ever need me, for anything, you let me know.'
Ruda tried not to look as the man turned and walked back down the hill, his heavy boots occasionally clattering irreverantly over the flat gravestones, the boots slick with the wet grass; the roar of the wind from the bay, like a swarm of bees or a blast of heat from a furnace, screamed in his ears.

Via Prague

Literary and other offerings from former Times-Standard reporter James Tressler, who is living, teaching and writing in Prague.

The Devil's Clothes

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